


J'avais rêvé d'un visage (I had dreamed of a face)

by lalunaticscribe



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond - All Media Types, Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, Dubious Consent, First Time, Floundering, French!Q, M/M, Q becomes Quartermaster eventually, References to The Prestige, Shit happened, Wilde Proposal instead of Labouchere Amendment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-11
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-18 23:38:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1447120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalunaticscribe/pseuds/lalunaticscribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bond POV of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1407490#main">Les signaux croisés</a>. Plus expansion.</p>
<p>Alternate Victorian history involved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Souvenir

**Author's Note:**

> Section 11 of the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act, AKA the Labouchere Amendment, was basically a blanket prosecution of sodomy and used to prosecute the majority of male homosexuals.
> 
> While I am fairly certain that the events described here are too simplistic and would have worsened the situation for LGBT rights or something like that in Victorian Britain, here I assume that Stonewall appeared early and Oscar Wilde ran for politics, which reversed criminalisation of male homosexuality. Centuries of persecution and discrimination were hand-waved in the process, so yes, I am aware of the difficulties involved for LGBT movements, to try and roll back long-established moral laws.
> 
> My brain is a bit odd that way.

In my reports about the situation that eventually resulted in the breaking of Anglo-French diplomatic relations with the forced return of Mr Geoffrey Boothroyd, I have detailed scantily to M details that, amongst many, places that the estimable Miss Moneypenny avail herself of continued employment with British intelligence. Her fortitude and intelligence displayed that would indeed place to shame many other operatives I have shared an acquaintance with.

However, I find myself disturbed, and thus have turned to the pen to avail myself of reminiscences that continue to haunt me despite my best efforts.

It is not a diary; a journal such like mine own cannot ever exist. Not because an agent that totes a green buttonhole is any less effeminate, but because  there are some things that should not be said.

 …

1885 had seen Oscar Wilde rise to high office, defeating Henry Labouchere’s attempts at unseating him. The two best writers of the British Isles had turned their hand towards politics, with Wilde leading with the championing of the Uranian philosophy. Having shocked Her Majesty and all and sundry, Wilde’s Proposal made it through the halls of British Parliament and was assented on the 27th of July, 1885.

Three years pass: It was with this moral uncertainty that had haunted me to Paris, the gay city that now seemed dull in comparison.

I was in Paris to facilitate the transfer of Miss Eve Moneypenny, M’s newest and seemingly the most capable of the secretarial pool, into the cesspool that was London. The bright city Paris greeted me, another cesspool, this one of the French Republic.  Le français  tripped off of tongues here and thereabouts as I walked down the Rue de Londres - a carriage given out and the rather short distance meant that I had elected to walk.

I had never before worked out a system between fates and the actions of one man. Perhaps it was chance, magic, fate; there I was, strolling down the Rue de Londres before I looked up to see an angel. Verdigris eyes shimmered, to me from where I stood, and the masculine angel and I locked eyes. The barrow-child, for he could be no other, cocked his head, to bare a long, exposed throat that dipped into a shirt barred with suspenders. Those verdant eyes had cast their spell.

I nodded in reply. Faster than the hounds of Hell, I had rung the bell to invite myself into his demesne. The apartment was not difficult to extrapolate, but that elfin margery opened the door. By another chance, I barged in, closing the portal behind me. It left me alone with the margery and myself in an isolated world.

The man - boy, seemingly - he tried to run, though I took his shirt and grasped tightly, feeling his soft buns in my other arm. The warmth was surprisingly pliant, almost made specially to cup within my hand. The angel of beauty scowled then,  adorable in his bewilderment and possibly good fortune at having reeled in such a big fish so quickly. The virtuous air he projected made me laugh.

“Well, you’re a real beauty,” I chuckled before I stole the offerings of Aphrodite from his mouth. “Come on, show me the way.”

The minx, little though he is,  was insatiable, almost insistently virginal in the carnality and the affected offence that only the unsullied must have mastered. His warmth against my self was highly agreeable, and I could not wait to place those parts of my anatomy against his bare. I said as much, prompting a blush and a parting of the pink cushions of his lips before I drove him against this mantelpiece of his _salle de séjour_. The frame of a photograph clattered, a dark-haired woman in a ball gown placed amongst the bric-à-brac surrounding his fireplace.

“Who is this?” I asked of the beautiful man I was half-undressing.

“M-- My friend,” the little one claimed, halfway through gasps as I finally found my way around his suspenders.

“She’s very nice,” I continued, deciding to remove the sole evidence of Miss Moneypenny’s existence in Paris that she, apparently, could not be bothered to do. “You’ll have to introduce us.”

‘Twas that time that he fidgeted while I tore at his trousers, and his words were lost to the oblivion of my  uncaring when  I felt at his supple skin and the peach fuzz of his arse.

“What is your name?” I gasped.

“Q- Q,” he shook his head, dark curls scattering to make him even more ethereal. “S’il vous plaît, go!”

“I am Jacques,” I gave him my name, couched in his language. It was the closest I intended, for his safety.

His buttons clattered in a shower of mother-of-pearl as I tore his chemise, and he moaned lowly while I lipped the skin of his breastbone, up to where the apple of original sin bobbed in his throat, and down to where he swelled. . .

You must realise, my profession does not exactly cover the erotic writings. Eton only prepares so much, and having been sent down in my youth certainly exacerbates matters.

What kind of words do I utilise to preserve the memory, the souvenir of Paris and happy coincidence? Shall I speak of a mare’s legs, strong and lithe and male, parted while I jived up his ass? Shall I talk of the delights I found in taking him against a wall and hearing his screams? Or of how I stoppered the sounds within his throat, choking between my thighs? The likes of Fanny Hill are too crass; the Greek subtleties ephemeral, for my little Q with the tail in his name if not on his self is alive, wonderfully so.

More importantly, why am I referring to myself in the third person when I am discussing private writings, the nature and content of such that shall merit an immediate visit to the flames?

The conclusion, thus, is that I am of that entity who shall use blank space in which I, the reader, reimagines the debauchery I placed my Q, my initialled, through on the evening and night. It is here, the dragon of St. George that James Bond hoards in his head, and a good illusion.

 …

Morning saw Miss Moneypenny barging into my room, bringing with her the grey clouds of foreboding, the faunlet Q trailing in her wake, helpless as a leaf in a storm.

“So you’re the one who...” she shook her head. “I asked for an agent to assist my movement across the Channel, and you sleep with my neighbour! Really, Mr Boothroyd did not need you to do the deed!”

“Will you please excuse us, Miss Moneypenny?” I requested. She huffed, but stormed out to leave both of us alone.

“Do the deed, Q?” I teased the little coquet who shrank into himself.

“Geoffrey Boothroyd.” He averted his eyes, despite having enjoyed my company in more than one way in the bed we shared “Erm… I have a confession. I’m not actually a prostitute.”

“What are you saying?” The fae-like margery was not a margery, not a dream. Not light and music and unapproachable as the minds of man concieve, but never real. “That- If you’re not a margery, then...? Why ever did you entice me? Wait, you just said... what did you do? For me to force myself on you... you must loathe me, Mr Boothroyd.”

“ S’il te plaît, Q,” the Frenchman was like an Eton schoolboy now, fidgeting in his figurative shorts. “Not...quite against my will. That first kiss maybe, but my opinions on the matter were reversed soon enough. So…” and here verdant eyes shyly met mine, “you’ll be escorting Eve- Miss Moneypenny, I mean, to England?”

No. Yes. No. There was no time… “Yes.” I paused. “Though, I suppose we must allow Miss Moneypenny some time to organise her affairs on the Continent...”

Q sighed. “You will be occupied, then, Monsieur Jacques.”

“It’s Bond,” I offered as Q turned his back. I rose to approach him from behind. “James Bond. I’d like it if we began a mutual acquaintance.”

“O- Oh...” Q briefly struggled as I hooked an arm to drag him back. “But, Eve- and England-”

Miss Moneypenny’s hollers were shut out by the door when I set him back onto the bed, amidst ruined sheets. “Tell me what you like, then.”

“I don’t understand the question,” Q automatically replied, watching my hand circle his wrist. Rather, my thumb and forefinger managed to loop around his right wrist, and more fingers trapped his left wrist up to over his head.

“Surely you’ve done this before,” I prodded at his suspenders before I realised the silence. Silence that could only mean-

I let go of his arms, which snaked their way to my shoulders, kneeling between marked, bruised, sins like his buttons, ruined and scattered around us. “Q,” I breathed. “Are you…?”

The Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as he tried to shift his arms, or legs, or anything that meant that he could get out between the weight of my body or his ruined sheets. “The Paris performance scene isn’t a place to find people like me,” he shyly admitted. “Everyone looks at the performers, not the _mise en scène_. Not an _ingénieur_.”

“A shame,” I replied, tracing the bruises before I dug my fingers in to hear him once again. “I rather like engineers, myself.”


	2. Dossier 1: Déshabillé

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A comment from melka on [Les signaux croisés](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1407490):  
>  _Oh, this was so cute. I very much liked the end, when you made the story very much your own with Bond's perspective._
> 
>  
> 
> _Perhaps the comedy of errors can continue as Bond cajoles Q to England. He can mistaken Moneypenny or Q telling him that Q fear of flying or sailing as a subtle suggestion that Q would prefer to be knocked out for the trip and absconded across the ocean. Q should be more indignant, but it is rather pleasant waking up in bed with Bond, even if in another country. And, well, if Bond happens to hook Q up with the best research and development equipment in the British Empire, he can hardly object, right? Q really should worry about his coworkers thinking he slept his way into the dept or being dept head, but it's hard to focus on that when Bond frequently ravishes him in said workplace. (And the coworkers can't really complain, because Q's brilliant with tech and he's an absolutely clueless minx, with whom half the dept has a crush on, which explains why Bond has to work endlessly to mark his territory...)_
> 
>  
> 
> So, authorial magic happened.

Over the course of weeks that flew through Paris, I picked up many facts about Q.

 ... 

Fact one: Geoffrey Boothroyd worked as an ingénieur to the Paris performance scene. By ingénieur, I meant for the conjuring scene.

“A lot of the work is stage management,” my coquet spoke slowly, wroughting some manner of device in his atelier, set a ways from the apartment. Sawdust was set away from a glowing hearth, the hot stones sparking within the maw of the beast that Q fed periodically. “Some of the best magicians are in London, of course.”

“Then London is the best place for the ingénieur,” I argued, confident in the information I had gleaned from Miss Moneypenny.

Miss Moneypenny had met Q in Paris, years before; before the 1881 Lyceum Theatre riots swept London ablaze and drove Oscar Wilde into the spheres of politics and created the Wilde Proposal.

One spoke of rumours that the dark hand of Her Majesty’s Government, nay, the virtual King of England himself, though those rumours should be carefully implemented.

Q smiled, all humour lost in his eyes. “London is not safe for the likes of me, not since I fled the violence of ‘81, across the Channel and from Dover to Calais in a malaise of worry and fear; how the feat was achieved, I knew not. Merely that, as a creature who could not abide the least amount of transfer, the boat ride had been harrowing before, and doubly so were I to return. Pray, do not tempt a man with the dream he cannot attain.”

“If it’s…” I began.

“I have money,” Q simply replied, setting down a set of pliers to tweak at a gold wire within the unusual contraption within the box. “There are reasons.”

I nodded in understanding as he shifted the contraption, threw on a bedsheet that clothed his painfully thin frame, and began wiggling that arse enticingly.

“Every magic trick has three parts, or acts,” Q lectured, strapping the contraption to himself. “The first, is the pledge. The magician shows you an ordinary object. It can be anything; a bird, a deck of cards, a man.”

Enticement personified, he fairly strutted for the brief moment it took to drape a large sheet over his clothed form, hiding the device that was glowing with lights. “The second part, the turn. The magician takes the ordinary something, and it does something extraordinary.”

The sheet billowed out, a flash of light following, blinding my eyes, when he disappeared.

Tentatively, I pawed through the sheet. My emotions had gotten the better of me; Q was gone- “Q? Q?!”

“You’re looking for the secret, of course,” Q strutted up behind him, green eyes twinkling as he approached the stunned agent. “You won’t find it, James. You want to be… fooled.”

I am fooled. I am bespelled by you, if only you knew how much.

 … 

Fact two: Q was deathly afraid of boats.

This fact I discovered by some coincidence. One of Miss Moneypenny’s acquaintances at the British Embassy had invited us upon the family barge on the river Seine, and it promised to be great fun until Q absolutely placed his feet sur terre and refused to move.

“You can’t make me!”

A public spectacle would have had been had on the banks of the Seine had Miss Moneypenny not excused him with a sly, “You won’t get to come back with us if you’re afraid of ships, Q.”

“I’d rather be knocked out first,” Q flatly replied, arms crossed and ringlets messed.

That could be arranged.

 ... 

Fact three: that Q was surprisingly rational.

“So the exploding pen is filled with a touch of the fulminate of mercury, careful not to let it touch your skin- what’s that?” Q asked as I set the two glasses of wine before us, in front of him.

“Sleeping medicine,” I answered. “The resolution of the seasickness problem.”

“You propose to drug me and drag me across the Channel into prosecution?” Q sounded mortally offended. “I did not say that I wanted to.”

“It was either that or knock you out,” I softly proposed. “But why make it so boring? Could you listen?”

Q scowled, but gave a gesture of allowance. “I suppose it shall not hurt to consider your inane proposal.”

“You will travel with Miss Moneypenny and I,” I pointed out. “From Paris to Calais, then across to Dover, and then to old blighty. London has changed; Wilde’s proposal made it into law.”

“What about the next time?” Q sounded worried. “The Conservatives and the Liberals will both see the Proposal fall before Wilde even exits from power.”

“That is the future,” I acknowledged the concern. “I am prepared to notify M of our… arrangements.”

At this, Q hesitated. The attractive blush covered the cheeks of my  _coquet_  in an attractive shade of damask rose. “And the glasses?”

“Should you trust me with your body across the Channel, and not to land you in prison, but as a wish, you may take it,” I offered. “Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

Q considered the implications, certainly. Wilde’s Proposal was barely in bed; there was a chance yet. Q would be part of the new wave of previously convicted or suspected sodomites to return to old blighty. “And if I do not?”

“Our acquaintance shall have to risk the Royal Postal Service,” I replied cheekily, to which he lobbed a cushion towards. "This is where the battle of wits has begun. It ends when you decide and we drink the wine and find out who is right and who is unconscious. We both drink, need I add, and swallow, naturally, at precisely the same time, and fate shall decide if you gained the laudanum."

"It's all so simple," said Q. "All I have to do is deduce, from what I know of you, the way your mind works. Are you the kind of man who would put the poison into his own glass, or into the glass of his enemy?"

"You're stalling," I answered.

"I'm relishing is what I'm doing," Q smirked. "No one has challenged my mind in years and I love it. . . . By the way, may I smell both goblets?"

"Be my guest. Just be sure you put them down the same way you found them."

Q sniffed his own glass; then he reached across for the second goblet and sniffed that. "Odourless."

The infuriating, maddening ingénieur smiled and stared at the wine goblets. "Now a great fool," he began, "would place the laudanum in his own goblet, because he would know that only another great fool would reach first for what he was given. I am clearly not a great fool, so I will clearly not reach for your wine."

"That's your final choice?"

"No. Because you knew I was not a great fool, so you would know that I would never fall for such a trick. You would count on it. So I will clearly not reach for mine either."

"Go on,” I challenged.

"I intend to." Q paused. "We have now decided the doctored cup is most likely in front of you. But I can only guess that you are used to having people not trust you, as I don't trust you now, which means I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. Yet, again, you must have suspected I knew, so you would have known I knew, and therefore I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me."

"Truly you have a dizzying intellect," whispered his sole prey.

"You are exceptionally strong, and exceptionally strong men are convinced that they are too powerful, so you could have put it in your cup, trusting on your strength to save you; thus I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you."

I should be very nervous now.

"But you are acquainted with Eve, who does not suffer fools, which means you must have studied, and if you can study, you are clearly more than simply strong; so you would have kept it as far from yourself as possible, therefore I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me."

"You're trying to make me give something away with all this chatter," I commented.

"I have already learned everything from you," Q pensively regarded the glasses. "I know where the poison is. Only a genius could have deduced as much. How fortunate for me that I happen to be one.”

He took a glass, the engineer’s fingers shaking slightly. "Shall we drink then?"

A strange look crossed his features and he pointed behind. "What in the world-?"

I turned around and looked at the sight of red taffeta. "An orgy. Time to move.”

"Oh.” Q began to laugh as I took a glass and drank, downing his own glass in victory. “No matter.”

"You guessed wrong, by the way,” I commented.

"You only think I guessed wrong," Q giggled. "That is the joke. I switched glasses when your back was turned."

He was quite cheery until the anaesthetics took effect.

I shook my head, picked up Q’s form, and walked out of the apartment to where Eve awaited us in amusement.

“So which cup was it?” Eve asked.

“Both,” I answered.

 ... 

Fact four: Q does not like to wake up too early.

“You utter cock,” was his first words upon awakening to find himself in a large nightshirt and wrapped deeply under dark bedclothes. “You drugged both glasses!”

“The fact that the thought never occurred to you does imply a certain lack of regard,” I replied, seated across of the windows.

Q sniffed, shivering. “Judging by how cold it is while I am freezing, I assume I am in England.”

“Scotland, actually,” I serenely answered. “Skyfall Lodge, the ancestral Bond family seat.”

“Of course. You must be a minor lordling or something. Just my luck. I fall into bed with a baron’s son.”

“Marquess, but the title fell out of use,” I frowned at the thought. “This is my old room.”

Q sat up, floundered amidst the bedclothes, and hid within. “Let me sleep. I’ve just been drugged for over two days.”

“Less than that,” I pondered, tugging at the bedclothes until a gowpen of flesh was within reach, my fingers skimming and digging until they found the rim of something.

Q’s breath caught, squeezing around my finger. “You utter-”

“Is that how you answer your gracious host?” I answered, rather mildly as I found that furl to thumb through the hairless cheeks, apart from dark invitations to the cleft.

“Gracious my arse, you’re a terrible, terrible- _mes pieds, connard arrogant_!” he cried out in French when I stroked the sole of his foot, causing him to draw up his foot and expose the gowpen I already held. One of his hands clamped and his nails bit down.

I laughed, before diving into the covers for the tight warmth once more, grabbing pale skin that glowed in the dark of the near-black bedclothes. Minutes, moments must have passed before Q rose for air, gasping with mirth and my blood under his fingernails as I rolled him over and then scrambled for the jar of oil as a prestige.

Fact five: Q is prone to screaming his pleasure at returning to England. The exact circumstances of discovery need not be established. You don't really want to know the secret, after all.


	3. À manger est de vivre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The rise of Q, potassium nitrate, and Kajiurago

 

_Samia dostia, ari aditida, tori adito madora…_  
 _Estia morita, nari amitia, sori arito asora…_  
 

“So, I loaded this fountain pen cap with fulminate of silver as well as an exploding agent of potassium nitrate- are you listening to me?”

“Of course, Quartermaster,” I answered.

   
 _Semari aisi, isola matola…_  
 _Soribia doche, irora amita…_

 

“I didn’t have to take this job,” Geoffrey replied, as haughtily offended as the best of the racing stallions as Ascot might be. The job was, currently, a method to improve the rate of fire on British small-bore firearms in a way to not increase barrel size. “You didn’t need a magician ingénieur to build your bloody false bottom-”

“We needed specialised work,” I mildly answered.

“Or make that improvised receptacle,” he continued, “filled with aqua regia which, I might add, became completely useless once we precipitated the gold and smuggled it hidden in your shirt-”

“We saved the Crown quite a bit in gold to be handed over to the Japanese,” I reasoned. “And you were highly praised for that work.”

Geoffrey turned his head to cock, looking at said receptacle, slightly dented and reclined on the far side of the atelier. It occupied pride of place at a low shelf away from his working desk.

Very delicately, he flung the cap down. Both of us watched the explosion.

“Silver… is a metal not supposed to explode, and I’m making it explode,” Geoffrey replied with a look to me. “Elaborate. Leave nothing out.”

After a pensive silence -- assuredly unbiased -- I gave him the offer from Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

It took much discussions about personal salaries. With assurances as to design fidelity and exclusive Crown access. Along with the promise of exclusive services from an agent of the Crown to gain an acceptance, over a period of sixteen hours filed and reported as an overwhelming success, but in the end Her Majesty’s Service had a Quartermaster.

   
 _Samaria dose, ifia mio, lora, fia, sia adora…_  
 _Samia dostia, ari aditida, tori adito madora…_  
 _Estia morita, nari amitia, sori arito asora…_  
 

Q’s humming was slightly distracting.

Not that it was bad, of course. Q was a passable baritone to my ears on the worst days, when the hounds of darkness never seemed to sleep. I am, of course, aware that this behaviour places Q upon a pedestal of what Miss Moneypenny addresses as a tendency to worship the objects of my life from afar.

For the purposes of clear notation, I have quoted her words exactly. I have also taken the trouble to inform her quite gently, yet firmly, that I am aware of Geoffrey as a person and not as an object of my exclusive possession.

Must that agent stand so close to Q?

“If you’ll excuse me, Double-O Five, I’ll- watch out!” The potassium nitrate distillate -- thankfully cool, but still the more putrid a stench, for the Quartermaster insisted on distilling his own -- spilt the man’s chemise a brown like hemp and sack-cloth.

“Oh my, I’m so sorry,” Q said very flatly.

“You little-”

“Double-O Seven,” Q granted a gracious smile. “Could you assist Double-O Five to the nearest tailor’s? I’m afraid his shirt is beyond salvageable.”

That shirt was Savile Row’s newest cutting; Q must be especially wrathful today. “Certainly.”

I paid a hackney, and Double-O Five spent the afternoon being taken to Savile Row via the long, scenic route next to the Thames. I do not the smell does not affect his sense of smell. Or the chemicals.

   
 _Semari aisi, isola matola…_  
 _Soribia doche, irora amita…_  
 _Samaria dose, ifia mio, lora, fia, sia adora…_  
 

“I hate this story,” Geoffrey complained.

On the one mission I had run in the Royal Opera House, a new opera had been exhibited and we had held a private box. The opera was scintillating enough that the privacy of the boxes had actually been ignored in absorbance of the rich musical composition, dramatic imagery and all-female cast.

“It’s a nice story,” I replied, non-committally. I had thought that there could have been something between the protagonist Margot and Camellia, yet I considered that the original magical cat that granted wishes was rather… blunt. It struck rather close to life, the wasted life-chances of a girl in our horribly unfair world.

“It’s depressing, it’s what it is,” Geoffrey complained.Q complained as well, and I could recite his argument: that love was a waste for an agent-

“I always feel sorry for Camellia, looking to repeat the chain of events to save everyone she knew,” he continued. “In the end, though, Camellia is left alone, stewing in her thoughts and dreams about Margot. It’s always terrifying, that prospect of… obsession. Camellia… is a terrifying character.”

“Camellia is… true, rather obsessed about Margot, because Margot was nice to her before, in their first meeting,” I conceded.

“At our first meeting, you thought I was a Parisian prostitute and took my maidenhead. You have to concede that they had a fairly normal basis to build their acquaintanceship upon.”

I caught the subtle unlike us, and smirked as the intermission passed and the second bell rang. “You forgot that I kidnapped you by drugging your wine, dragged you across the Channel and locked you up in my bedroom in a manor house up in the Scottish Highlands. Feeding you bread and cheese.”

“At which we had a long discussion concerning Camembert and Caboc, and you admitted that the Camembert was not anything like-” Q shuddered. “Roquefort. At least I know that my mate has a discerning palate.”

At least I know.

It is a dream, of course. I cannot guarantee recourse every assignment; Q cannot always be safe. People die, in our world, more often than most, and merely do not know it. Wilde is Prime Minister for now, but for how long this shall continue is uncertain. At least I know; we love, we eat together, and...

To eat is to live, and to live, I must eat. Exactly what is my dish of choice, I shall leave you to guess. It begins with Geoffrey, and ends with a Q, because, despite the distance of the work, England and us, we are together yet, for all our fears.

  
_Semari aisi isola matola,_   
_Soribia doche, irora amita,_   
_Samaria dose, ifia mio, lora, fia, sia adora…_   
_Adora…_   


 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fulminate of silver and mercury are primary explosives, used as primers for guns and in percussion caps. This is still the 19th century, you know.
> 
> Potassium nitrate was not derived through chemical or industrial processes in the 19th century, but rather through manure. I believe another way was using sugar.
> 
> The lyrics interspaced are from [Sis puella magica](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKtfwubz9OY). They are nonsensical, but they form the basis of the Ominous Latin Chanting you hear. They are also a very nice prelude to Puella-Magi-Madoka-Magica-performed-in-opera as James and Q discusses, lampshading themselves in Homura's/Camellia's position of saving Madoka/Margot.
> 
> Critiquez, s'il vous plaît!


End file.
